Atonement
by James Connoct
Summary: The Doctor is dead. But from the ashes, an angel rises. (Work in progress- Doctor Who meets Supernatural)
1. Prologue

He didn't want to go. But he supposed that was that, really: that all things had to die eventually, and he'd lived longer than most.

Still, there was _more, _so much _more _to be done, and he? He was leaving, dying and dying and expelling his existence in a flash of eternity that would never be here, or _there _again.

The Doctor supposed he wasn't really dying, per se, examined the last flowing bits of himself as they flowed past his person and into the bursting, burning, dying air of the TARDIS. No, he wasn't dying- there would always be another Doctor (until there wasn't, and the Doctor had never paused to consider that)- but _he _was dying, and that gave him cause to regret his end.

Was it selfish? Yes. Why was that surprising? Should it be?

Of course it was. He had known it was coming, but perhaps the cruel irony of it all was that he had thought that he'd escaped his own fate. But the drums always beat, and in the end, he'd faced his death with the stinging tears and the broken heart of a warrior whose battle is fought and whose war is won, but must fall by his own hand in the end. The Doctor had brought himself down upon his own kindness, torn apart by his nature. He'd always supposed that would be the way, that he would atone for his sins eventually through his own death. Perhaps that was why he allowed himself to die, every time.

_Two billion, four hundred-seventy million. _

And they weren't all. He tried, so many times, to save them, when he was younger. But he couldn't. And so, the cost of their lives was paid for by his own. The Doctor experienced pain, unimaginable pain, threw back his head and screamed as each atom of his being was twisted in two, a thousand nuclear explosions occurring inside his body, and then reformed.

It was surprising because he'd fully expected it to be this way. He'd fully anticipated, from the moment he had first seen Rose Tyler with his own eyes, it to be this way. Wanted it to be this way. That was why he'd given her himself. A better version, one who was not guilty of the crimes he'd committed-

but that was a lie, too, and a self-made one; he'd watched Him kill the Daleks

-and so he was flawed by virtue of existence.

So why was it surprising?

He was surprised because he was human. He'd modeled himself after a human, in the beginning. And then he'd as good as became one, he supposed, and had forgotten why his Time Lord self had never been so human before. Pride had killed him. His own faults. But he _wanted, _wanted so _badly _to redeem himself.

And now- his hands were no longer his own, he could _feel _his ribs snapping in two and reforming around his new bursting-now sutured together- hearts- he would never be afforded that chance. And in all his time, as he remembered Rose and felt the cold Void clutch at his being, as he felt so inescapably _alone _and desolate, he wished that he did not have to go.

One more time, then. To see her. To tell her he love he-

The Tenth reincarnation of the man known to the universe as The Doctor died in agony, and the universe keened in mourning.


	2. Chapter 2- Molding

The Doctor wondered what happened to Time Lords when they died. An interesting thought, as he was, himself, dead. He'd have smiled if he could, if he still had the facial muscles and the bones to do it, but the simple truth was that he did not and he could not smile because, of course, he was dead. The Doctor sighed plaintively- or would have, because he could hear himself doing it in his mind, but again with the time-space wibbly-wobbly flesh problems.

_Still, plenty of time. Lots of time, loads of time. Well, if time exists any more._

The Doctor felt his own amusement, reverberating in himself and in the space his mind occupied like a ripple of water. It was dark, though, and The Doctor could do nothing but wait. He _was _dead, wasn't he? Gone as surely as he'd been the last time he'd regenerated. The Time Lord knew he should be. But did he _want _to be? He'd have laughed at that question.

Light. Blinding, flashing, light, and nothing but light.

_Oh. That's what happens. _

And suddenly, The Doctor _was. _Every particle of his being was present again, which- and The Doctor blinked here, because it was simply _impossible_- meant that he was in another place other than the one he'd occupied in the temporal stream of space-time dimensions.

The Time Lord grinned, beamed at the white nothingness around him, as he raised his hands (and they were _his _hands, no less!) to his jaw, checked for-

"Teeth! I still have teeth! Brilliant!"

The Doctor paced over the blank air, nothing to support him, no evidence of gravity, not anything. He ran one hand through his hair- and he loved his hair, it was one of his favorite parts about being him, really- and stopped, words seeming to explode like a pent-up stream.

"How am I here? Paradox? Slip of the time-space paradigm? No, no, never happened like _this _before, because I'm still me and I've never been here. _Could_ be that the Codex infinity stream somehow relapsed into the TARDIS core, but there's no TARDIS…"

The Doctor blinked again, eyebrows scrunched together in a deep frown as he looked down. The corners of his mouth twitched as he spoke.

"And I'm naked. That's… interesting. Never been displaced from reality naked. Still, nevermind that, I've never been displaced from reality. Could do with my sonic, though…"

And he held his sonic. The Doctor stopped, dead silent. The blankness around him echoed with the sound of his voice. The Tenth regeneration of the Doctor was, for once, nonplussed. He raised the screwdriver in front of him, clicked through the settings of it- all two hundred seventy-four of them- as he scanned around him and found…

Nothing. There was nothing around him, no source of power, _nothing _except for him and his screwdriver. Which meant….

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, thought of his suit.

Warm fabric, chestnut brown with sky blue pinstripes, the best suit he could ask for- the first and only suit he'd wanted, really- materialized on his body. His trainers, too, seemed to appear from the nothingness around him, as did his glasses and every other thing he normally carried with him.

The Doctor ran his tongue over his teeth, noted his hair was suddenly coifed in its usual manner.

_I'm in my own closet reality. _

The Time Lord squinted, felt his hearts hammer at his chest. He slowly began to hum, rocking back and forth on his heels before expelling his thoughts in a mad dash of ideas.

"TARDIS, flying castle, frogs on a boat, Moses, Galifreyan city in model, Richard Nixon, dinosaur riding a cat, blue jalopy, cheesecake, one frappuccino extra tall whipped cream cherry on top with an extra shot of chocolate syrup!"

The blankness suddenly _expanded, _every single one of the things The Doctor had spoken of seemed to jump from the air with the roars of engines and the TARDIS and creatures, a befuddled American president, and the cold weight of a Starbucks drink in the Time Lord's left hand.

The Doctor stared, yelled, "And now _nothing!"_

Blankness.

He stood by himself in a blank, white, nothingness. The Time Lord fumbled his words, attempted to speak but could not. Finally, he sputtered out four questions.

"What. What? _What? __**WHAT?"**_

The Doctor had worked madly. Burning curiosity as he ran, mad dash, through the nothingness, trying to reach an end, a border, a _something, _had faded into acceptance that he was trapped in an expanse of infinity. And so, the Time Lord began to work. The TARDIS' engine would not run, something kept it grounded, and he had built another. That, too, had failed. The Doctor had then materialized four separate but identical TARDISes, as well as one entirely different and built to his own specifications.

There was nothing he could not do, and everything _to _do. And yet...

The Doctor stared blindly through space, sat down and rested his head on his hands, alone in his own separate- he guessed, at least- universe.

_I suppose this is what happens to me. I'm locked in my own separate universe inside my mind, where nothing but me exists. Until I die. But I already _have. _And now? _

It was a fair question, he thought. Because he was alone, so alone, and there was nothing he couldn't do, but he was alone. He sat for eternity, lacking hunger, lacking the need to think, lacking life.

It was- The Doctor had realized this after he realized he was essentially a god in his own right- Hell. Nothing new to see, nothing original to create, simply reused ideas and knowledge of things he'd already known.

And worst of all, he could not die.

The Doctor sat with his back against the TARDIS, staring off into the stars he'd made appear a few moments earlier. Or hours, maybe. Possibly just minutes. That _was _a strange concept. Did time exist anymore?

"Well. If it did, I wish something would _happen," _he mused, "because I'm absolute rubbish at playing at god."

The Time Lord remembered the last time he'd done that. _The last time I was the Time Lord victorious. The survivor. _

He had failed. And the one person he'd wanted to save, _had _saved? Dead. Her blood on his hands. Images flashed before his eyes without his volition- the rain outside of a house which flashed once with light before falling silent.

Above all else, The Doctor felt a cold weight in his chest, a sinking grasp on his soul. He'd ran from it during his life. Too fast for it to catch up, because beneath it all, he knew his own crimes. Time passed. Faces floated in his eyes. Them, too. All on his hands.

_Two billion, four hundred-seventy million. _

The Doctor blinked.

"I'm sorry." He whispered. "So, so sorry."

Hot tears fell from his eyes.

Heat flashed in his chest, the Doctor stood and roared into the whiteness, felt his lungs burn with the anger of his cry-

"_**All I wanted was to save them!" **_

His voice did not echo in the empty space- it simply ceased to be. Silence once more. The Time Lord fell to his knees, buried his face in his hands as he spoke once more to nobody- or somebody, as he was dead- in particular. He felt his voice break as the warmth of rage faded from him and left him cold. The voice in his head whispered to him unbidden, and he whispered back.

_Two billion, four hundred-seventy million._

"I'm _sorry. _So, so sorry. If I could save them, if I could just do _something, _anything at all..."

_Two billion, four hundred-seventy million._

The Doctor groaned in pain, allowed his hands to drop, wet with tears, and stared into the whiteness above.

"Anything," he repeated, wishing the pain in his chest would cease along with his feelings, "Anything at all. Please."

His words did not echo. His thoughts continued. And The Doctor remained motionless. The longing in his chest intensified to a physical ache. When his lips formed words, no air passed them.

"_Anything." _

And suddenly, The Doctor burned.


End file.
